Boolooroo

“ Some is good, an' some is bad, an' if all the Blueskins are like their Boolooroo, they can't be called fust-class."
"Don't let me hear any more impudence, prisoners!" called the Boolooroo sternly. "You are already condemned to severe punishment, and if I have any further trouble with you, you are liable to be patched."
"What's being patched?" inquired the girl.
The soldiers all laughed at this question, but the King did not reply. Just then a door in the palace opened and out trooped a group of girls. ”

“ And then, no doubt, he had come upon the three men, the sole inhabitants of that solitude and the sole masters of that corner of the forest. The brute men had risen against the animal, on seeing him the possessor of so fair a prey, and they, in their turn, had tried to snatch it from him.
They were dead; and Balaoo had carried elsewhither the sacred object of that battle of the gods. Balaoo! . . . Balaoo! . . .
Moabit suddenly fell into pitch darkness; and Coriolis collided with the living walls of the clearing, which closed their branchy arms and leafy hands upon him. ”

“ But the low-class monkeys with the prehensile tails were the greatest disgrace of all! A pithecanthrape can mix with all creation, from the highest to the lowest, without losing caste; but not with those! . . . If he, a pithecanthrope from the Forest of Bandang, were to do such a thing as that, no oriental anthropoid would ever forgive him; and Gabriel, if he came to hear of would spit in his face. . . flatly!
Balaoo, after calling on the pole-cats, exploring the surroundings and parading his pole-cat scent, returned to the lion-house. ”

“ Every race has its scandals. Among the members of the Human Race are disreputable troglodytes, who live in stone caves, squatting on their hams, with hair coming down to their heels, even as there are astounding Esquimaux, with sealskin legs and thighs, and niggers, niggers who absolutely dare to wear white shirt-collars. If Balaoo ever rose to any sort of position among the members of the Race, if he woke up one morning with proper shoe-feet, he would give lectures all over the world in favour of forbidding niggers to wear other than black collars. ”

“ I don't understand the language of animals as you do, Balaoo. I only understand them when they don't speak. And there are plenty who know me in the forest and come and sit in my lap and snicker to me; and we understand one another without speaking. I have friends in the forest. Why, I have only to show myself by the big fir-thicket, with my hands full of nuts, to have squirrels climbing all over me! ”

“ And, when the denizens of the forest, the real wild brothers of Bandong, gradually drew closer to the new family in the mangrove village and, on spring evenings, formed a circle around Balaoo and listened to his tales of men, Balaoo would say in their language, after a short prayer to Patti Palang Raing:
"Animals are animals and gods are gods, but men are nothing at all! ”

“ It was here that Balaoo must have hurried with his prey, to this friendly solitude of the forest where men would not come to rob him of her whose presence was as necessary to his life as the air he breathed. ”

“ Balaoo was saved on the day when he set eyes once more on the place where he had seen his mother for the last time. It was three days' march from Batavia, a few hundred yards from the mangroves which, for a thousand years and more, had been digging their roots to the very heart of the earth. He recognized the disposition of the glade and the thick leafy vaults that cast the same shadow and the same light; for it takes hundreds of centuries to alter those landscapes created by the last upheavals of the world and the first vigour of the universal sap. ”

“ Oof! They breathe no more! . . . They moan no more! . . . They move no more! . . .
They are dead all three, with arms outflung on the red grass. But you, you are in a sad plight too, my poor Balaoo! . . .
However, this is no time to coddle yourself, when the white lily of Moabit sinks down softly to the ground, exhausted, after beholding your victory. It is your turn now to carry the white lily in your arms, with precautions worthy of a man-child's nurse, by the Lord Patti Palang Kaing! . . .
And you laid the lily on the cool bed of leaves in your lonely dwelling in the Big Beech at Pierrefeu! ”

“ The wirreenuns, they say, swallow their stones to keep them safe.
At each Boorah a taboo is taken off food. After a third Boorah a man could eat fish, after a fourth honey, after a fifth what he liked. He was then, too, shown and taught the meanings of the tribal message-sticks, and the big Boorah one of Byamee. As few men now have ever been to five Boorahs, few know anything about these last. At each Boorah a stone was given to a man, and when he had the five he could marry. ”

“ His hails on the roofs of the Hotel-de-Ville were, above all, warnings, entreaties to fly!
The moment that it was no longer a question of killing Balaoo, Coriolis would call to him in different terms; and, in fact, he ceased to address him with a man's shout and cried, in monkey language:
"Tourôô! Tourôô! Tourôô! . . . Gooot! . . . Woop!" [4]
Then and there, the monster was seen to put his head cautiously between two planks of the scaffolding and anxiously to look down upon that numberless and, for the moment, silent crowd. ”

“ The Bororos maintained that the sun, Cervado, and the moon, Ittary, were two brothers, both being males.
They believed in a superior Being—the essence of goodness and kindness—a Being who will never give pain or hurt anybody; therefore the Bororo, who was really at heart a great philosopher, never offered prayers to that superior Being. Why pray and worry one who will never injure us? they argued.
Then they believed in a wicked and revengeful devil, the Boppé, to whom constant attention was paid because by him was caused all the trouble that humans can have. ”

“ Balaoo thought that his ears must have deceived him. But no, Coriolis repeated the hideous command. Take off his boots! He, who has always been forbidden to show his shoe-hands! And who had been brought up to loathe and abominate his lower extremities! And who had never revealed this mystery except before the brothers Vautrin, in the depths of the forest, on days when he had gone hunting without leave and taught them to build invisible little huts in the trees! ”

“ Coriolis had thought himself very clever in removing Balaoo from the bad influence of the forest and transferring the pithecanthrope's abode to the heart of the capital; but he had committed a gross imprudence in taking a house only a few steps from the bears' pit, the monkey-house and the lions' and tigers' cages. A man can't think of everything! ”

“ He is one of those natives who go perfectly mad when their blood is up, and think no more of killing any man, woman, or child near him than you people do of wringing the neck of a kea. Besides, Te Ua, [Pg 373] who has declared himself to be a prophet, boasts of a message from the angel Gabriel, that the sword of the Lord and Gideon is committed into the hands of the Pai Marire, with which to smite the pakeha and the unfaithful Maoris. But I have sent one who will put Ropata on their track ”

“ No school is found on Boeroe, and the simple people assert with submissive sadness that nothing is done for them. The tone of regret suggests an underlying consciousness of the hopeless ignorance inevitable under the conditions of their narrow lot. The watery plain, covered with tangled verdure, extends to the foot of the twin peaks which merge into a low range of wooded hills, their lower slopes glistening with the grey-green foliage of the great kajopoetah trees. ”

“ They are a fair and handsome race of men, more like Afghans than Beloochees: they do not wear the costume of Sinde, but roll a cloth in folds loosely round their brows, and allow their hair in long tresses to hang suspended, which gives them a savage appearance. They took the name of Boordee, from a noted individual in the tribe, according to the Belooche custom, for the various tribes are nothing more than descendants of some person of note. The chief place of the Boordees is Duree, but they have no large towns. ”

“ Boolibany, the Capital of Bondoo, stands in an extensive plain at the foot of a range of rocky hills, which are distant from it about a quarter of a mile east: to the west, the dry bed of a considerable torrent winds along the plain, and, in the season of the rains, conducts the water, which descends in a thousand streams from the hills, to the Falune and Senegal.
[125] Here is the residence of the king, or Almamy, but it is by no means so large a town as we expected to see in the capital of so thickly inhabited a country. The number of souls do not exceed fifteen or eighteen hundred ”

“ When the last battle is fought, and my words come true, yield yourself to the Kawana, Hori Grey, saying, 'We are conquered. Show us mercy. We desire peace for the future.' He has always been a friend of the Maori people. He is a friend now. You will find that you will receive mercy, that a portion of your lands will be restored to you. Not all. Part will be taken for utu, as by Maori custom. After that I say, heed my words and those of the good Mikonaree who have always tried to do you good—who will do you more good in the future. 'Love your enemies; do good to those who despitefully use you. ”

“ Reckless in assault as elusive in retreat, the desperate Maori seemed a demoniac foe. Living on fern-root, shell-fish, or kumera, he needed no baggage. The women of the tribe, mingling with the warriors, cooked the necessary food, carried off the wounded, and were not averse to occasional fighting. With ten thousand regular troops, as well as levies of militia and volunteers against them, with powerful tribes of their own race, rusés and daring as themselves, who fought for the pakeha with a ferocity not exceeded in the bloodiest tribal wars, their position appeared hopeless. ”

“ Never had so many men been known to go hunting, especially at night. No one knew what it meant, but it was most alarming. It was no good their hiding: they had reckoned without the moon and they could be seen gliding like snakes through the grass. And besides they could be scented from a distance, for the wind was blowing straight from Saint-Martin-des-Bois.
All this was useful information for the Three Brothers; and Balaoo imparted it to them. As also received permission to curl himself up in a corner of Moabit ”

“ Let me tell you that one of the chief virtues of the Bororo men, old and young, was the fidelity with which they could keep secrets. The youngest children were amazing at keeping secrets even from their own mothers. ”

“ But my friends in England will never believe me if I tell them of a Maori chief writing notes, and a Maori young lady talking excellent English."
"I am not a young lady—I am only a half-caste Maori girl; but I can help your people now and then. Is there anything else that I can do for you?"
"There is one thing more which would add so much to my pleasure in this journey," said Roland, emboldened by the strange, unreal aspect of all things—the flowing river, murmuring in the stillness of the [Pg 116] night; the savage people in groups, lying or standing around ”

“ The news which Balaoo brought his friends was this: "I have just come from the top branch of the Big Beech at Pierrefeu. No one has entered the forest yet. Tourôô! . . . Tourôô! [2] Still, there are a lot of red trousers in the fields. They don't look as if they were preparing for battle. They are all eating and smoking, lying on the grass, like cows. ”

“ A native at this time said some words in the Maori tongue which seemed for the time to allay the wrath of the raging wild beast into which Kereopa was transformed.
"It is well. Their tracks will be found; Ngarara is a keen hunter when the prey is near. He is pursuing the Ngapuhi girl Erena, whose heart the pakeha soldier has stolen from him. He will cut his heart out of his breast and eat it before her eyes. I will give her to him for a slave. All the pakeha women shall be slaves to the men of the Pai Marire when the day of deliverance shall come. ”

“ There's a big tribe at the back of these chaps, and they're in a dangerous humour about that cursed Waitara block. That's why the crowd wouldn't back the white man up. He's only a wharf-loafer, when all's said and done."
This explained the affair in great part. Doubtless a mêlée would have ensued if any hot-blooded individuals in the street had commenced an attack upon the Maoris. An obstinate and by no means bloodless fight must have arisen. Doubtless, in the end, the whites would have conquered. Then the tribe would have murdered outlying settlers, or attacked the town. ”

“ Some of the wirreenuns buried these teeth by the Boorah fire, others carefully wrapped them up to keep as charms, or to send to other tribes, each according to the individual custom of his tribe.
This all over, once more there was a marching and chanting round the fire, then the boys were taken away and given food for the first time since they left their mothers.
No wonder that the 'supernatural' was mixed up with their impressions of the Boorah: fasting nourishes hallucinations. ”

“ An occasional steam jet shooting into the air appeared like an emissary sent to warn of approaching danger.
"I should like to have seen the terraces by night," said Massinger, "but it is not a country for late travelling."
"No, indeed," said Warwick; "a false step, a stumble into the wrong pool, has before now cost a man his life. I once saw a poor dog scalded to death in a moment. I think you will find Rotorua and the Valley of Geysers sufficiently interesting. If you care for Maori legends, you should ask Erena to tell you the tale of her ancestress, the beautiful Hinemoa." ”